Regional planning blueprint hasn't convinced everyone

You can zoom to 2050 through a computer program that can show you what the Sacramento region's housing and traffic might be like in full, and sometimes scary, color.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments is using this virtual time machine for an ambitious and controversial project aimed at getting cities and counties to think regionally rather than locally.

It's a plan that, when finalized, is still little more than a detailed concept of general principles meant to guide the region. Getting individual municipalities to use those concepts will be the hard part, and so far, not everyone is buying into it.

Without changes in land-use, transportation and housing policies, predicts the program, the six-county region would put most of its predicted 1.7 million additional people by 2050 in new subdivisions. These sprawl in vivid crimson on the computer program's map across most of western Placer County and the northern three-quarters of Sacramento County.

That's not all. Highways, roads and streets would be congested beyond your worst Los Angeles nightmare, you would spend more time each day in your car commuting to a far-away job and smog would get worse.

But wait; there are alternative futures that can be summoned at the touch of the computer -- scenarios where housing is built to fill in existing urban areas, near jobs, stores and mass transit.

That's the vision of SACOG, which has spent the last two years on a $3.5 million effort called the Sacramento Region Blueprint Project.

The fun, creative part is almost done, with the SACOG board scheduled to vote on a "preferred Blueprint scenario" in December that is like that alternative vision.

"I think it's fair to say Blueprint has already been a success. We've never had hundreds of people, not to mention thousands, come together to talk about the future before," says Robert Waste, professor of public policy and administration at California State University Sacramento.

However, like any vision, the reality of taking the Blueprint from a nice-if-it-happened concept to a what-does-this-mean followup for the six county and 22 city governments is much tougher.

"That's the thorniest issue," Mike McKeever, the Blueprint project manager, told a SACOG committee this month as it began considering post-approval "next steps."

"It's politically very, very sensitive as well as complicated," he said.

Most of the 28 local governments that make up SACOG are very supportive of the Blueprint in concept. However, El Dorado County had to withdraw because of internal legal battles over its general plan. And Elk Grove is openly critical of the Blueprint, calling it an attempt by SACOG to usurp locals' land-use and planning authority.

In addition, all of them still have plenty of questions about how the Blueprint will be used -- and particularly what it means when SACOG doles out billions of dollars in federal transportation funds in future years.

All roads lead to gridlock: Those transportation funds were the impetus for the Blueprint project. SACOG consists of the counties of El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba and their 22 incorporated cities. Its primary job is periodically writing a Metropolitan Transportation Plan to distribute federal dollars for the region.

The last MTP was approved in July 2002, outlining spending of $22.5 billion in federal funds through 2025, including carpool lanes and light rail to the airport.

The SACOG board members -- representing all 28 local governments -- learned to their dismay that if all the projects were completed, traffic congestion would still increase 50 percent.

"It was the consensus of the board to look at land use, to see how land-use decisions could be made in a way to better complement transportation investments," says Martin Tuttle, SACOG's executive director. Work on the next MTP, specifying funding through 2030, begins in 2005.

Tuttle looked around the country for models, found Envision Utah in Salt Lake City, and borrowed many of its ideas. Several SACOG board members are visiting that city next month to see how the city has used its project.

The Sacramento Blueprint, however, goes further -- Tuttle calls it "Envision Utah on steroids."

The preferred scenario: SACOG is using a GIS software program called PLACE(3)S that includes a database of all 700,000 parcels of land in the six counties. GIS, or Geographic Information System, programs can link data to specific places on a map.

As SACOG developed four possible scenarios for 2050 -- when the region's population is predicted to grow by 1.7 million to nearly 3.7 million -- the software could instantly show the consequences in full color.

Scenario A was status quo, with development policies unchanged from today. B was some growth through reinvestment in existing urban areas. C has higher housing densities and reinvestment with most of the growth in the existing cities. D was the most extreme, with highest housing density and growth centered in core areas.

The growth near transit, for example, ranged from 2 percent housing growth and 5 percent job growth for Scenario A to 35 percent housing growth and 44 percent job growth in D.

SACOG presented the alternatives at workshops around the region during 2003 and at a forum last April called "TALL (Transportation, Air Quality, Land Use and Leadership) Order: Choices for Our Future." At all of these, a total of 5,000 elected officials, business leaders and members of the public manipulated the software to see the consequences of their choices.

After a summer of meetings with local governments, the SACOG staff came up with what is called the Discussion Draft Preferred Blueprint Scenario, which will be further tweaked this fall before the planned December vote.

That draft scenario is based on Scenario C, with some modifications recommended by participants at the April forum and summer meetings.

This draft scenario will be discussed at a regional summit of local elected officials on Oct. 14. SACOG in the meantime will be running an insert in all regional newspapers explaining the draft scenario, with a questionnaire that readers can return. It has also commissioned a public opinion poll on views towards growth and development issues.

The sales job and the fears: But now begins the difficult part. What effect will the Blueprint have on land-use decisions made by the 28 local governments?

SACOG staff and board members are just beginning serious discussion about what will happen in 2005, assuming the tweaked draft scenario is approved in December.

SACOG officials stress that the scenario is not meant to mandate any specific development for a specific parcel or area -- just general principles that could ease future regional congestion.

SACOG has no land-use or planning authority under state law; that is left solely to local governments.

"For a regional agency to look at land use really requires skill to deal with the notion that land use is a closely guarded sacred issue with local elected officials," says SACOG executive director Tuttle.

But that is one of the many critiques by officials in Elk Grove. Officials insisted that Elk Grove's own new general plan be inserted into the Blueprint instead of the SACOG proposals.

Elk Grove's plan, for example, included future developments south of its present city limits, which the scenario did not.

The City Council feels its general plan includes three years of much more thoughtful local participation and effort.

Elk Grove officials also feel the Blueprint was done too quickly and could be an attempt to make SACOG a "shadow planning agency for the entire region," says Eric Norris, the city's planning manager.

"We think the cities and counties that make up the region and have representatives on the board still don't know enough about this to make an informed decision," he said.

He said Elk Grove fears SACOG will use the Blueprint in making future allocations of transportation funding and will "build a light-rail line where they think it should go," despite local needs and wishes.

The SACOG board has previously voted to make sure the Blueprint allows local governments to decide to what extent to participate in the project and is a guide for future land use "while not prescribing local land use and regional transportation investment decisions," according to an Aug. 31 memo by Tuttle for SACOG's Housing and Land Use Committee.

"There is a fear that we're going to create some kind of report card and Elk Grove will get a D or F and not get access to regional transportation dollars," McKeever told the committee. "We have never contemplated a punitive approach."

However, SACOG board member Lauren Hammond, a Sacramento City Council member, said cities in the future that want light-rail funding but have not approved transit-friendly mixed-use developments should not get money.

"We should say 'No' because they made the wrong decision," she said.

Cities and counties with current general plans are resistant to rewriting them to conform to the Blueprint, but those like Sacramento city and county, Wheatland and the new city of Rancho Cordova that are revising or writing plans say they are using the principles.

"Our goal to craft a complete, well-balanced and sustainable city is mirrored in the goals of the Blueprint, so we are all very much on the same page, so to speak, with the project," says Rancho Cordova Mayor Linda Budge.

El Dorado County had to drop out of the Blueprint project (although Placerville is part of it) because of a protracted battle over its general plan. The courts in 1999 threw out its 1996 plan, saying the county did not address some environmental impacts.

A new general plan was adopted this summer, but a referendum on that plan has qualified and an election on that, and a possible competing initiative, is likely in March. The issues in the county are the impact of residential growth on traffic and resources.

The county would like to get back into the Blueprint once the general plan is resolved, says Peter Maurer, acting county planning director.

The bottom line: CSUS professor Waste believes it ultimately won't be that difficult to put Blueprint principles into practice because the main housing market in the next two decades is going to be seniors who want the kind of communities in the Blueprint.

"The snapshot of the region looks to me like an almost perfect market for smart growth anyway," he said.

SACOG does plan to maintain the computer program and database and let local governments use them for their many future decisions.

"Bottom line, I think each city and county will do what it thinks is best for itself," says Marysville Mayor Paul McNamara, a SACOG board member. "I hope they take some of the ideas put forth in the Blueprint project because whether we like it or not, what one city/county does, does affect the rest of the region."